York in three layers: the walls, the Minster and Vikings underfoot

York isn't toured by a list but by layers: under the medieval city lies a Viking one, and under that a Roman one, and each is seen from a different place — the Roman from above, on the walls; the Viking from below, in JORVIK; the medieval from inside, in the Minster. Each layer also has its own rule about when to see it.

Roman Eboracum doesn't survive as a ruin so much as a bottom course of stone. It's clearest at the Multangular Tower in the Museum Gardens: the lower part, regular limestone blocks cut through by a band of red tile, is Roman, from the early fourth century; the larger blocks above, with cross-shaped arrow slits, are medieval additions. Two ages in one wall, with no sign needed to explain it.

The same goes for the walls: the medieval rampart runs partly on the line of the Roman fort, and Bootham Bar stands on the site of a Roman gate. So the walls are the start, not an extra — from them you see the town plan the Romans laid out and everyone after them only built on.

Between 1976 and 1981, on the site of a demolished sweet factory in Coppergate, archaeologists lifted more than forty thousand objects and — far rarer — the timber remains of the Viking town's houses. The reason was the ground: waterlogged and airless, it kept wood, leather and textile that rot away elsewhere. Which is why JORVIK, opened over the dig in 1984, is a reconstruction built not on guesswork but on finds from the very ground it stands on.

The ride through the reconstructed street lasts sixteen minutes and shows September 975. The same water that preserved the town nearly took it away again: in December 2015 Storm Desmond flooded the building, the most valuable objects were moved in time, and the museum stayed shut until April 2017. Entry is by timed slot, so this layer, unlike the walls, gets booked.

Medieval York reads best in the Minster, and in one window. The Great East Window is twenty-three metres tall and nearly ten wide, roughly a tennis court, made of more than three hundred panels; John Thornton was commissioned in 1405 and paid sixty-six pounds. It's the layer you look up at, and the only one of the three that asks you to stand still and look.

Two things decide when. Sightseeing runs Monday to Saturday 9.30am to 4pm, but on Sunday only 12.45 to 2.30pm, because the rest of the day belongs to services — Sunday is a poor day for the Minster. And the ticket is valid for 12 months from the date on it, so the Minster doesn't have to share a day with the walls and JORVIK: the window one day, the rest of the cathedral the next.

The order — from above, from below, from inside

GuideYork as a whole: what fits, and how many days it needs:York →

Day tripsIf you're weighing York against a shorter day out of London:Day trips from London →

Tour York by a list and you see a pretty old town. Tour it by layer — the walls in the morning, JORVIK in its slot, the Minster on a weekday afternoon — and you see a city where each age built on the one before, not in a museum case but in the stone you walk on.